This story is based on the Crypton Future Media vocaloids. Most of the inspiration has been taken from the Magical Mirai shows.
CHAPTER 1: It's Complicated (Introduction)
"L, R, L, R, stop & dash..." the words were blinking at the gigantic screen in yellow color one by one, piercing the thick air all across the hall.
"...& up & talk..." Rin repeated those words for everyone to hear, dancing and gesturing together with her brother in front of the crowd; some people in the front rows sang with her in ecstasy.
Miku couldn't stop thinking about how much she loved this song. She had just finished getting back into her 'canon' costume a few moments back and was now standing just behind the stage and watched the twins perform. And she couldn't help but smile the whole time.
This was actually a rather rare occasion for her, being able to pause for a second in the middle of a show and not worry about where to stand, how to move, what expression to put on for the fans. Just enjoying her awesome friends performing an awesome song.
What most of the people who kept coming again and again to every single one of the hopelessly sold out shows didn't realise was that the artistic experience required a lot more work than met the eye. What they saw was a stage where the six main stars sung and danced the night away for their pleasure.
Behind the figurative curtain, however, a whole army of various directors, sound engineeers, cameramen, light and video programmers, drivers, managers, make-up artists and whatnot was responsible for the whole group to always get to the correct place, look good, perform at 100 %, and not get crazy from the extravagant life that they all experienced. The Vocaloid's voices might have been what most of the people were coming for, but it would be far less effective without all the visual and musical effects accompanying the show -and everyone behind that.
When this show was first introduced to the fans, the Vocaloids were presented as androids designed to entertain. Of course it was entirely made up, but the act has been tailored to make it seem challenging, if not impossible, for regular human beings. In reality, every detail, every second and every square inch of the whole place had its purpose and people taking care of that purpose; performing live was only one part of what the singers had to do. It also included knowing exactly where to stand at what point, and the choreographies were thought out to correspond with some of the special effects -and vice versa.
One of the more hectic parts of the show was rapid jumping into different outfits made for one particular song, sometimes in mere seconds. These kinds of clothes had to be carefully made specifically for fast changing: they stayed intact on stage, but all one had to do to take them off was to undo a couple of cleverly hidden buttons and the entire outfit would simply collapse on the ground, saving plenty of precious time in which the artist would slip into a different costume. In some cases, the performer wore one costume over another one on stage and indeed only needed a few moments of perfectly mastered flicks of a finger to make it seem -together with the other cued special effects -as if the android literally changed their appearance in front of everyone.
That explains why this brief moment of peace was so dear to Miku. Little things like that meant that everyone had to master their every move, not only on stage but backstage as well; one mistake could put the whole show in jeopardy. So far, only Kagamine Rin was so insolent -or ignorant, nobody was entirely sure -to do things in any sort of unexpected way from time to time. She was a difficult person to understand, anyway. One time, she smashed a prop guitar on stage; and in the next moment, she was the cutest and most innocent little girl in the world. They usually blamed such behavior on puberty; then again it was a small miracle that Len, her twin of literally the same age and genes, was such a sweetheart and sort of boring compared to his sister, despite the usual adult topics of his solo songs.
The Kagamine siblings were the closest to Miku out of the whole ensemble, especially Rin. The two of them usually shared a room when they were staying at hotels; they also shared some of their closest secrets together. There are certain things that girls are only able to tell other girls, and that was the one thing that Len lacked to be just as close of a friend to Miku as his sister was.
Maybe it was because these three were the younger half of the Vocaloids. Luka and Kaito were both twenty years old, having been born only four months apart. They had a few different opinions and approaches to life compared to Miku and the twins who were 16 and 14 years old, respectively. Especially Luka loved to point out how mature she was from time to time; Miku sometimes suspected Rin that her sudden changes of behavior were caused by her desire to grow up as fast as possible, and if that was the case, the pink-haired star might have been to blame partially.
And then on another level above that, of course, was Meiko. She was mainly the group's choreographer and dance instructor who appeared as a permanent guest star on the show -and the truth was she was the most animated dancer of them all. The others sometimes lovingly called her 'Mom-ko' with regards to her role in the group as well as her age -even if she was only 24 years old, she was still by far the eldest of them.
Of course Miku loved them all. Things weren't always all sunshine and rainbows, but they were a family and they were supposed to pull through everything together.
And having a loving family wasn't as customary in her eyes as one might think.
The sudden change in the sound environment made Miku snap back into reality. While she was lost in her thoughts, the twins completed their song and were now on their way off the stage. She turned left and ran towards their exit. Even though she was supposed to come back at the stage from a different entrance, Miku spontaneously decided that she had to do something first.
She bumped into Rin and Len just as they emerged from the heavy black curtains dividing the backstage from everything else. Miku laughed and pulled them both in for a hug.
"Whoa!" Len gasped. "What's this about?"
"Nothing," Miku replied and squeezed him even tighter before letting go. "I just love you guys so much!"
"Well, thanks, but a little heads up would be nice next time," said the boy and rubbed his aching ribs.
His sister chuckled; she still had her arm wrapped around Miku's waist. "We love you too, Miku. That's an appropriate reaction, by the way, you grumpy cat."
"Yeah, yeah. You better get going, though, Sammy's about to explode," said Len. The turqoise girl turned her head back where she was supposed to be: Sam, one of the stage managers, was indeed frenetically beckoning her to come over.
"Whoops. Well, see you guys later!" she smiled again and hopped towards her nervous co-worker.
"What the hell was that?" Sam hissed when she was close enough and pointed towards the stage which was now completely doused in darkness; only the weak reflections of a few thousand glowsticks were roughly revealing the set's outlines. "You're gonna be late."
"Yeah, like 2 seconds. Lighten up, Sammy." Miku twirled right past him and dove into the darkness. People in the front recognised her silhouette and immediately cheered.
The young star spaced out and let the long hours of routine practice guide her every step.
"Whew," she said about 45 minutes later when she finally left the stage for good that night. She was happy, but exhausted.
"You nailed it," a familiar voice spoke up next to her. "As always."
"Thank you," Miku replied and turned her head. Kaito was standing there, leaning towards the steel construction which was soon to be dismantled and taken away.
"Seriously though," the blue-haired boy stepped closer to her; "you have twice as many songs as the rest of us combined, and you never make a single mistake. You're awesome."
"Oh, stop it," she grinned. "I honestly don't know what I'm doing anymore. I just go back to practice room with Mom-ko and hope for the best."
"Isn't that boring sometimes?" said Rin somewhere above their heads. She was sitting on the scaffolding about 7 feet above ground level.
"No," Miku replied. "Should it?"
"Maybe. I mean, what about the moment? What about being spontaneous?"
"Oh, you mean smashing expensive guitars and getting away with it?"
The twin sticked her tongue at Miku. "I told you, it felt good at that moment. And people liked it too!"
"You know, whatever. Come down before your legs become the next thing you break." Miku smiled. The two girls were usually fighting like this for fun; they didn't really mean it.
"So, um," Kaito said quietly, making her look at him again; "wanna get a drink? We've got some time to spare."
"Thanks, but I'll pass. I just wanna hit the shower as soon as I can," she explained.
"And the guitar wasn't expensive, you know?" Rin shouted from the ladder. "It was like a 500 dollar piece of wood."
"How much is that in yen?" Miku asked.
"About 55,000," said Kaito.
"Dammit, Rin, that's like... Six or seven people who bought the tickets basically payed for that guitar, and you just wreck it into bits." She crossed her arms and watched the blond girl approach them. "How do you sleep?"
"Oh, I sleep well, and you know why? Because I don't worry about every little detail in life, unlike somebody I know," Rin replied with her arms crossed too.
"I'm glad 55,000 yen is a 'little detail' to you, you upstart brat."
"Well you're a fucking prude!"
The girls started at each other for a second before bursting into laughter.
"Okay, now that we've got that out of the way," Miku said, "I really have to go take a shower. I'll catch up with you guys later."
She hugged with Rin briefly; Kaito was looking at her kind of disappointed, so Miku giggled and gave him a hug too. Then, she waved and walked away.
"You girls are crazy, you know that?" Kaito said to Rin and looked after their friend as she was getting lost in the distance.
"Hey, Kaito," the twin asked and tucked on his sleeve; "did I hear you right? You were asking Miku to get a drink with you?"
"Um, maybe?" he replied and blushed just a little bit.
"Well how come you didn't ask me too?" Rin whined. "I don't wanna be left out!"
Kaito ruffled her hair; she only managed to groan and tolerated it with a martyred expression. "You're too young for that stuff."
"Hey, I'm mature enough! Fuck!" she retorted defiantly.
He laughed and turned around to walk away. "Swearing doesn't make you appear more mature. If anything, it makes you appear more stupid."
"You take that back!" Rin took a few quick steps to catch up to Kaito.
"Will you take that word back?"
"Fine, I take it the fuck back."
He snorted again. "I changed my mind, you are the insane one."
"Hmph," she replied. "At least you didn't call me cute this time."
"The evening's not over, cutie pie," said Kaito, and Rin punched him in the elbow.
"Why does everyone take me for the cute one, anyway?" she complained.
"Weeell," he thought for a second; "have you ever seen puppies playing?"
"No." Judging from her tone, Rin might have as well said 'Finish this comparison and you're dead.'
"What I'm saying is, when little puppies play, they're basically preparing for adulthood. They fight, bite each other in the neck, but they're too small to really hurt one another. And the way they pretend to be big and dangerous, well... it's adorable. Like, they're trying hard, but they don't really know how to adult."
Rin blinked. "Why do you know so much about puppies?"
"Of course that's what you take from that," Kaito sighed. "I dunno, I spend a lot of time on the internet, I guess."
"Yeah, sitting backstage waiting for your one song, right?"
It was true. With Miku being the main attraction of the whole show, the others didn't get as much space. But surprisingly enough, this setup wasn't entirely the management's initiation.
One of the many unique features of the show was that the songs were written by fans; everyone and anyone had an opportunity to create another hit. Most people did so only out of love and respect for the Vocaloids and the opportunity to be proud that their song in particular, out of thousands of others, was chosen to be performed on stage. Ultimately, what this meant was that when the setlists were planned, the managers could literally pick 30 of the best songs which were ever created for this occasion, which was the reason behind the genre variability of the shows as well as the high level of artistic experience.
Somehow, Miku became the Vocaloids' flagship. The fans fell in love with her more than any of her colleagues, and so the most songs were being written for her. The management soon realised that promoting the show basically as 'Miku and friends' was the smartest decision business-wise, which only resulted in the others not having to work as much the main star -and not spending as much time in the spotlight.
Kaito smiled. "Do you think I regret anything?"
"You tell me," Rin replied.
In the meantime, the two of them arrived to the so called 'living room'. The actual changing rooms were reduced to small de-constructable booths literally next to the stage for time saving purposes; however, the singers always had one room reserved backstage for relaxing and preparing for their acts. Len was there, lying on a sofa and looking into his phone.
"You know what, I don't really mind," Kaito continued. "I get to be with Miku... and all of you guys all the time. I wouldn't get the chance to meet such amazing friends if it weren't for my 'one song' every night."
"That's one of the sweetest things I heard you say all day," Luka's soft voice responded. She was sitting behind the open door reading a book on audio engineering; she already changed from her complicated costume and was dressed in plain jeans and a red vest.
"Hi!" Rin said to her. "Sweetest? You should have heard Kaito when he was talking to Mikmmph," she failed to finish the sentece because Kaito swiftly covered her mouth with his hand and held her so she couldn't escape. She struggled like a trout on a hook, but her friend was too strong for her.
"You can let her go, Kaito, I know," said Luka without any expression whatsoever. "It's really obvious when you're paying attention."
Len lifted his head and looked at them. "What? What's obvious?"
His twin mumbled something into Kaito's palm and made a heart with her fingers.
"Oh, that." The pale boy turned his attention back towards his phone.
"Come on, guys!" Kaito finally let go of Rin; she giggled, ran towards the sofa and flopped next to her brother's feet. "How do you all know?"
"Okay," Luka closed her book loudly. "First of all, I could make a tomato soup out of your face right now. If that doesn't give it away, I don't know what does."
The twins laughed.
"And second," she continued, stood up and looked into Kaito's eyes; "it's been going on for months. You may not say anything to anyone, Kaito, but we can see what Miku does to you. Including that," she added as her friend smiled at the mention of their turqoise colleague.
"Okay, but can we please drop it now? It's not something I want to discuss," he said, a little bit upset now. Rin has already lost all interest in the topic whatsoever and was poking her brother in his waist; Len was trying hard to ignore her.
"Honey, I don't think it's healthy to let it all boil inside you," said Luka. "I don't want to push you, but if you ever change your mind, you know I'm here for you, right?"
"Yeah, I know. And thanks," he sighed.
"Cut it out," Len groaned at his sister. She giggled and kept on provoking him until he jumped up with a mouthful of curses and fought back. The twins turned into a laughing and, in Rin's instance, squeaking tornado of limbs.
"Well, my point still stands," Kaito commented on the situation amusedly. "I'm glad I have you all in my life."